There has been no shortage of serious court decisions in recent weeks.
On Monday, the Capital Court sentenced the man who attacked and injured his own father with a circular saw after an argument with a life sentence. A few days earlier, two men received the same severe punishment in the first degree after they killed a 94-year-old woman in Hegym, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, in November 2020. At the end of August, the homeless man who murdered both his landlord and his partner was sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance.
Stagnant data, unchanged rules
At the same time, the number of people sentenced to actual life imprisonment (TÉSZ) in Hungary has not changed significantly in the past period - it was revealed from the reply sent to our newspaper by the National Command of the Penitentiary.
According to the BvOP
currently, 75 legally sentenced to life imprisonment and 363 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment are currently serving their sentences in domestic penitentiaries.
The number of TÉSZ prisoners has increased dynamically since the introduction of the penalty, in the first year of its introduction, i.e. in 1999, there was only one such convict in Hungary, in 2012 there were 25, in 2014 there were already 49, and in 2019 there were 57. Last year, 72 TÉSZ- and it was the same as in the previous year.
Since the introduction of the most severe punishment, the only changes that have taken place are that, based on an amendment, an automatic pardon procedure is automatically started for TÉSZ prisoners after 40 years, during which they examine whether the given person can be paroled.
The government decided to introduce the mandatory review after the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) repeatedly condemned our country for its effective use of life imprisonment - on the grounds that if the convicted person has no hope that his sentence will be reviewed, it is considered humiliating treatment, and thus violates the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is true that forty years is a long time for the ECHR, they would be happier with twenty-five.
So far, however, the government has not wanted to amend the domestic regulations and, as we found out - despite the fact that the topic arises at certain intervals at the EU level -
he continues to stand by his position, i.e. he does not plan to change.
It was thrown back by the Constitutional Court
At the same time, there was a round in the country as well: Ákos Kozma, the Commissioner of Fundamental Rights, turned to the Constitutional Court (Ab) at the end of 2020, asking the body for an interpretation of the Basic Law, since according to him, not all those sentenced to life imprisonment are guaranteed release within a foreseeable time.
However, the Ab rejected the motion last December, stating that
the relevant legal provisions are provided for a person sentenced to life imprisonment,
they have the possibility of release within a specified, foreseeable period of time. In other words, they regulate exactly what the petitioner's question was aimed at. In this sense, they actually provide a legal answer to the specific question.
Therefore, the Constitutional Court ruled that the examination of the given question cannot be carried out solely by interpreting the Basic Law, without the intervention of legislation. A necessary part of a constitutionality investigation with such a content must also be the referred, related statutory regulation. Therefore, the Ab did not see an opportunity for a substantive investigation of the specific question.
Some are even stricter
Examining the practice of a couple of European countries, it turns out that the regulations in the Netherlands, which is considered to be a model state of democracy, are even stricter than in this country.
Since the abolition of the death penalty, life imprisonment has been the most severe punishment, without the possibility of parole. Such convicts can only be paroled after a royal pardon.
In Great Britain, there is also the institution of life imprisonment, and here, too, someone can only be pardoned in exceptional circumstances.
According to Italian regulations, life sentences can be commuted after 10 years and parole after 26 years.
Of course, the USA is no exception, here too someone can be sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole, but in the United States the death penalty even exists - even if such a verdict is imposed less and less often.
In 27 of the fifty US federal states, it is possible to impose such a sentence, and the actual life sentence in all states.
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